Homemade Bounty Bars from Yoga Girl Rachel Brathen

Did you know that Yoga Girl Rachel Brathen has a book? I reviewed it and made her bounty bars!

You might know Rachel Brathen aka Yoga Girl for coining the hashtag #yogaeverydamnday and the beautiful pictures on her hugely popular Instagram account (1,8 mio followers!). She also published a book, which recently came out in German as well. As you can imagine, this is NOT a cookbook in the traditional sense. This is a wellness book, with a few recipes strewn in, comparable to Tara Stiles book I reviewed earlier last year. To find out what I thought about the book and Rachel’s delicious vegan Bounty Bars, continue reading!

I figured I pick a few pictures from Rachel’s Instagram feed, in case you are not familiar with her. The beautiful photos you find there, you can also expect to find in the book. Yoga Girl is split up into seven chapters, each with a story dealing with a specific theme and/or part of Rachel’s life, yoga practice, recipes tying in with the themes and some reminders of important points at the end.

True yogis are simply those that live a good life and make the best of what they have. On and off the mat.

When you read the book, you realize that she was not exactly a “good girl” when she was younger, lots of alcohol, drugs and bad behavior was involved from a young age onwards. She was faced with the divorce of her parents when she was just two and the death of her loving stepfather when she was five. Rachel was a completely out of control teenager, when she finally accepted help and let her mother send her to a meditation facility in the north of Sweden, where lots of things changed for her…soon after she left for Costa Rica, where her deep love for yoga started.

It doesn’t matter what clothes you wear on the yoga mat!

One of the things that immediately stood out to me and deeply resonated was when she said pretty much that people should rather focus what they do on the yoga mat than what they wear. It’s just a side not and I’m not even and avid yogi, but sometimes the yoga culture that is being portrayed online seems quite focused on looks and wearing the latest, expensive brand – buuut, that could be a whole other blog post! 😉 There are lots of highly styled pictures in her book too, which could be seen as somewhat of a contradiction of what she says, but I guess you need pretty pictures to sell a book (which I absolutely get). Speaking of pictures, I really enjoy the simple and clear step by step pictures she gives for the different yoga poses – they are easy to understand and follow.

Starting the day off right: No phone in bed, drink hot lemon water, do yoga before breakfast every damn day, and read a book if you have extra time, don’t surf the Internet!

Even though there aren’t a ton of recipes in the book, I was curious to try one of them. I really love how simple and quick her bounty bars recipe was – just coconut milk, coconut oil, cacao powder, salt, maple syrup and shredded coconut. The only thing that needs some time is that you have to refrigerate the coconut milk for a few hours beforehand. The bars are not going to look exactly like bounty bars – they are not as smooth and cut like brownies, rather than single bars like the “real” bounty bars. I also dusted some shredded coconut on top – but it’s not the point to have identical treats. You could also just call them delicious chocolate coconut bars. My Mum loved them too by the way, which is a huge thing – she is not much into “healthy” treats at all. 😉

Place the can of coconut milk in the fridge over night or at least for a few hours. The creamy part of the milk and the watery part will have separated. This is normal, you can use all of it.

Mix the coconut oil, cacao powder, salt, 5 tbsp maple syrup and the coconut milk in a bowl until it forms a smooth cream.

Spread half of the cream in a shallow dish or baking pan and put in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Mix the shredded coconut with the remaining maple syrup to form a thick paste.

Take the dish out of the freezer and spread the coconut cream on top.

Pour the remaining chocolate cream on top and put in the freezer for 30 minutes.

Take the dish out and cut up into bars. Enjoy!

Notes

The more coconut milk you use, the more the chocolate will taste like milk chocolate.As the chocolate is based on coconut oil, it will melt fairly quickly, be aware of this, when you take it out of the freezer.You can also add a few drops of peppermint oil, for a refreshing kick!

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A few more words on the bounty bars – I only made half a batch and had slightly less coconut milk than was probably necessary, but it still worked out completely fine. Probably line the dish/tray with some parchment paper, so the bars are easier to get out. I didn’t do that and it was a bit tricky to get the bars out. 😉

Have you heard about Rachel Brathen aka Yoga Girl before? Did you read her book, or are you planning to? Let me know!

Thank you so much, Brandi! They actually do not have as much shredded coconut in them as real bounty bars do. The chocolate on its own is delicious too 😀 A friend of mine recently said they looked like brownie slices, not a bad thing either I guess 😀

There are a lot of great yoga and just life nuggets in this book it seems. I especially love the whole it’s not about what you look like while you practice but just that you practice. And reading over internet surfing, I need to work on that lol! Her photos are gorgeous, I’m going to have to go explore her IG now, and so are these delicious chocolatey bars! Thank you for sharing 🙂

Definitely, Natalie! There are lots of great, little nuggets in there that really resonated with me. I really need to try harder to NOT immediately check social media etc. while I haven’t even made it out of bed! 😀

Kat, that was a seriously honest and awesome review of Rachel’s book. I love the points you touched on about yoga culture, Instagram culture and our sometimes complicated relationships with those things. The bars sound wonderful. A good yoga session followed by one or three of those bad girls sounds perfect to me right now!

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Hey, I'm Kat! I'm writing about nourishing (breakfast) food, travel and throw in a little bit about eco friendly living and beauty as well. Let me show you that eating well and living eco friendly doesn't mean you have to deprive yourself!read more...

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